What Really Happens When Binge-Watchers Break Up

Can you really watch "Orange is the New Black" without thinking about him?

Everett Collection

By
Jessica Derschowitz

Jun 03, 2014

Last year, my boyfriend and I took regular trips to Texas from the comfort of our own couch. We weren't actually traveling, of course, but settling in to watch an episode (or two, or four) of Friday Night Lights. Over the course of a few months, we watched all five seasons — 76 episodes total, 40-something minutes apiece — after work, on rainy Sundays, and when one of us begged the other to watch just one more.

We talked about Coach and Tami Taylor like we knew them, rooted for the Dillon Panthers to win games like they were actually playing, and said, "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" to each other on the regular. Whenever I think of FNL, I think of watching it with him — which is unfortunate, since he abruptly pulled the plug on our relationship a few months ago.

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Non-traditional TV watching has spawned a culture all its own. "Binge watching," the act of consuming an entire TV series in multi-episode sittings, has become easy thanks to on-demand streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Go. Shows you may have missed, or watched long ago and want to revisit (hello, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are available in their entirety. A survey last year of nearly 1,500 TV streamers conducted on behalf of Netflix found that 61 percent of them binge-watch shows regularly, and 73 percent had positive feelings toward the practice. No surprise, then, that the company unleashes entire seasons of its original series all at once so fans can do just that. And there's even the concept of so-called "Netflix adultery": when someone watches ahead on a TV show they were supposed to watch with his or her significant other.

When my ex and I binged as a team, it felt as if no one else in the world was watching but us — and because we went at our own pace, no one really was. Our in-a-vacuum intimacy spawned countless inside jokes, debates over plot developments, and private moments shared only with fictional characters.

Together we latently plowed through The Wire, Friday Night Lights, and Orange Is the New Black, and binged on Breaking Bad and Scandal until we caught up with the networks. Our next "project" was going to be The West Wing — something he'd seen that I hadn't, and was excited to introduce me to — but before we could start, my binge-watching partner and I suddenly weren't partners anymore.

We, of course, did lots of other things besides watching TV. But during the six years we were together (the final three of which we lived together), some of my favorite days were ones when he and I would curl up in the apartment and queue up an episode (or four) of whatever we were watching at the moment.

Amanda* did the same with her ex during the nine months they were together through her senior year of college. She loved Girls and he'd tolerate it; he loved House of Cards and she tolerated it. "Binge-watching each other's favorite shows, in a strange way, taught us a little bit about each other's interests and personalities," she said. "He loved thrilling, scandalous crime shows and I loved girly, romantic, slice-of-life kind of things."

After they split, she remembers, "I had a period of time where I thought things like, 'Maybe not doing anything fun together was why we couldn't make it work,' but looking back on it now a year later I don't think that's true. I enjoyed my low-maintenance relationship, and he did too."

Before Cara and her ex broke up, they opted to binge on a recent buzzworthy series together.

"When my now-ex and I were figuring out ways to salvage our failing relationship, we figured that we needed to start sharing more experiences. So when he signed us up for a Tough Mudder, at my behest, I agreed to binge watch Breaking Bad with him. For a month or two we got really immersed in all things Jesse and Walter. It definitely gave us something to discuss other than our cat," she says. Their relationship lasted long enough to get through the first half of season five together, but not the second — by the time it aired on AMC, they'd already been broken up for two months. And while she was hesitant to finish the series, she's glad she did. "There are certainly things that I wasn't able to handle a few months after our breakup, but almost a year later, I'm pretty fine with everything — including Jesse and Walter. And even Skyler," she says. "Kind of."

Post-split, I continued on with most of the shows my ex and I watched live with the rest of the world: Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Louie, and Homeland. I abandoned some, like True Blood, which I got tired of a few seasons ago but kept watching because he liked it. And I've gone down the binge-watching rabbit hole solo with Sherlock and Veep, both delightful. But I've yet to return to any of the series we watched start-to-finish in our own little bubble.

That said, a new season of Orange Is the New Black is about to premiere, and I'm not sure I'll be able to resist watching the entire season in one fell swoop — regardless of the fact that we used to do the Taystee Twist deux.

Thinking back on those days may always be bittersweet, like remembering that weekend we went to Boston last summer and downed beers in a random dive bar. But while I loved, and will miss, watching shows with him, I also loved the shows themselves — the characters, the storylines, and the process of discovering something new. So, despite my breakup, I won't be breaking up with binge-watching. And, for the record, I still plan to watch The West Wing. Eventually.